Hard Times

a novel by C. Dickens (1854), dramatized in 1867 under the titlef of Under the Earth or The Sons of Toil . Bounder by, a street Arab, raised himself to banker and cotton prince. When 55 years of age, he proposed marriage to Louisa, daughter of Thomas Grad grind, Esq., J.P., and was accepted. One night the bank was robbed of £150, and Bounder by believed Stephen Black pool to be the thief, because he had dismi ed him, being obnoxious to the mill hands; but the culprit was Tom Grad grind, the banker’s brother-in-law, who lay perdu for a while, and then escaped out of the country. In the dramatized version, the bank was not robbed at all, but Tom merely removed the money to another drawer for safe custody.